


It's Okay to Be Upset

by ohnoanotheroneofthese (didnotthinkitwouldcometothis)



Category: Pierce the Veil, Sleeping With Sirens
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Bullying, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Fluff and Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-04
Updated: 2015-10-04
Packaged: 2018-04-24 19:01:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4931500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/didnotthinkitwouldcometothis/pseuds/ohnoanotheroneofthese
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Vic's been bullied at school but he doesn't like to talk about it. Kellin has been watching him pushing the thoughts away for too long and decides to confront Vic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's Okay to Be Upset

**Author's Note:**

> This flu makes me feel like my brain is working on half speed and I've been eating all sorts of meds for the past few days so let's just blame it on all of that if this sucks. :D

Vic really hated school. Well, not necessarily the school itself, but the people in it. Teenagers can be really cruel, especially when they form groups where the main goal seems to be cooler than others, to impress the other people in it and to not care about who gets in the way. Someone has said that there’s nothing more terrifying than a group of teenagers laughing near you and Vic definitely has to agree. Technically it’s not even that, Vic would be elated if the group of school bullies were only laughing near him, but no, Vic has no such luck. He knows walking in the halls alone is practically him asking to be targeted, the group usually just sticks to throwing insults or evil glances when Vic’s in the company of his friends or his boyfriend Kellin. But now, being surrounded by the group and being pushed around he wishes he had walked with someone else. And he also wishes that he wouldn’t need to, that he could fend for himself.

“Stop it, leave me alone!” He says, yells to the people surrounding him.

But the words were having practically no effect. It’s an awful feeling. When you put all  your authority and strength into saying something but it’s the same as if you were saying it as an suggestion instead of an order. You want them to stop saying those words, to stop doing those things, but it’s like they don’t even listen. The feeling of helplessness washes over Vic as their words are imprinted in his mind.

“Hey shorty, elementary school is few blocks away from here, did you get lost?”

“Where’s your _boyfriend_ now?”

“What’s wrong, why don’t you just go past me?” One says and when Vic steps forward he pushes Vic back in the middle of the group and Vic stumbles to regain his balance.

He wants to act though, he doesn’t want to show weakness, doesn’t want to give them another reason to taunt him. But as the insults carry on and the frustration starts to pile up he feels his throat closing up and tears welling up in his eyes. He needs to get out of here soon or he’ll lose the composure he fights so hard to keep up.

As if on cue he hears footsteps approaching and suddenly there’s a voice yelling, “What the hell is happening in here?!”

Vic turns around and sure enough, walking fast towards the group of bullies are Vic’s boyfriend Kellin, his brother Mike, and their friends Jaime and Tony. Vic feels ashamed by the fact that his friends have to see him like this, helpless and so close to tears, being surrounded by bullies. He’s even more ashamed because his little brother has to see this. He’s supposed to be the strong one, he’s supposed to look after Mike and not the other way around. He feels kind of useless and that doesn’t help the fact that he’s already close to falling apart.

“Just talking with the Vic here,” one of the bullies says with a smug grin.

“You leave him alone right now, ” Mike says and steps forward a little more.

“Oh don’t worry we were just leaving,” one of the bullies says and like that, they all turn to leave. They’ve already had their fun after all. There’s no point in starting a fight over this. It’ll be easier to just wait for the next time they see Vic walking alone somewhere, with no protection from his friends.

“Are you okay Vic?” Kellin asks and comes closer to Vic.

Vic can detect the concern in Kellin's voice and it’s almost the last drop that makes the tears fall. He needs to get out of here before he’s crying in the middle of the hallway, so he quickly walks past Kellin and goes to the bathroom that’s in the same hallway. He needs to calm down.

"Vic…” Mike says and starts walking behind him but Kellin stops him.

“Let me go talk to him,” he says and gives a reassuring look.

He saw the state Vic was in and he knows how much he hates other’s seeing him weak. He knows that Vic wanted to go somewhere quiet, somewhere more private, to calm down. But he’d be damned if he let Vic be alone now. So he walks to the bathroom door and quietly walks in, noticing that the bathroom is empty except for Vic standing there in front of the sinks with his body tense and his hands gripping the edge.

Vic hears the door opening and then closing and he turns around to see that it’s Kellin. He doesn’t really want anyone to see him right now but he’s glad that not all of his friends came here. He turns back around to face the sink and closes his eyes, trying to calm down and block the situation from earlier from his mind. He’s focusing on taking calm, even breaths and is willing the urge to cry to go down.

_It’s okay, the moment is over._  He repeats in his mind. _Everything is okay, you’ll be fine._  He knows that everything isn’t fine and that they next moment he meets the bullies again the bullying will start once more. But he has to focus on the moment. He needs to think that at this moment he's okay. He’s going home and he doesn’t need to fear meeting those people again until tomorrow morning at school. 

Kellin walks to stand next to Vic and cautiously puts his hand on top of Vic’s that is gripping the sink so tightly that his knuckles are turning white.

“Are you okay? Did they hurt you?” He asks again, searching for signs of any injuries.

“No they didn’t, I’m fine.” Vic says and retreats his hand from underneath Kellin's. He can’t calm down when Kellin is being so caring, when he’s reminding him of the situation and making him think of it again. He’s not mad at Kellin, oh god no, he just needs to block out everything and everyone so he can calm down.

“It’s okay to be upset, you know.” Kellin says quietly. He’s not offended that Vic is rejecting his touches and answering his questions bluntly and with obviously fake answers. He knows how Vic is and how he copes with things. But by no means does it mean that Kellin is happy about it. He feels helpless when Vic shuts him out and doesn’t let him help. He just wants to make him feel better.

“It’s not.” Vic replies. “Not here.”

And they stand there in silence for a while. Kellin watches as Vic’s body visibly relaxes, how his hands aren’t gripping the sink so tightly and his body isn’t so tense anymore. Vic's calm breaths sound more natural and less calculated now and the out breaths aren’t shaky anymore. Eventually he opens his eyes again and Kellin knows that Vic has managed to calm himself down completely. He's showed the incident and his emotions in the back of his mind and is acting like nothing's wrong. How he’s able to do that every time, Kellin has no idea. But it can’t be healthy, he thinks, but doesn’t want to say anything. Not here where they can be interrupted at any moment and where he knows that Vic will be reserved with his emotions.

So when Vic turns to Kellin with a smile that’s so obviously fake, Kellin accepts it and doesn’t question it, but instead smiles back, offering his hand for Vic to take and leads them out from the bathroom.

“Let’s go home,” Vic says and they meet up with their friends in the hallway. They all give Vic concerned glances but no one says anything, and Vic is silently grateful. All he wants to do is push the memory out of his thought, to the back of is mind with the numerous other things that he doesn’t want to think about, that he wants to forget.

The walk from the school is relatively normal. It's clear that Vic's friends want to say something about what happened and therefore there’s still some tension in between Vic and the others but everyone is acting like nothing happened, like this is just like any other Wednesday afternoon and they’re walking together from school. They all live in the same direction, with Kellin being the one that lives closest to school. So when they reach Kellin’s home Vic and Kellin say their goodbyes to their friends and head inside.

The house is empty because Kellin's parents are still at work, and the boys walk to Kellin's room.

“Vic, I think that we need to talk,” Kellin says as they are both sitting on Kellin’s bed, facing each other.

“About what?” Vic asks, acting dumb even thought he knows very well what his boyfriend wants to talk about.

“About what happened,” Kellin says and gives Vic a sympathetic look. He knows that Vic doesn’t want to talk about it and he’d much rather just pretend that it didn’t happen but Kellin just can’t do it anymore. He can’t watch Vic pushing everything at the back of his mind, he can’t wait for they day when it all get’s too much and Vic let's it out in one way or another. No mater how, he's sure it wouldn’t be pretty.

Vic can feel his lower lip trembling and his eyes filling with tears and this time he doesn’t fight it. They’re in the safety of Kellin’s bedroom where no one can bother them and he knows that he can trust Kellin. Kellin won’t make fun of him or think of him any different. He knows that he can’t keep bottling it all up like this, but he doesn’t want to be a bother.

As the tears start to fall, Kellin pulls Vic into a tight hug, gently moving his hands up and down Vic’s back, trying to calm him down. It only seems to make Vic’s crying louder, and it seems like once he’s started there’s no way of stopping it any time soon. Kellin can feel his own eyes watering but he doesn’t let the tears fall. He needs to be here for Vic now, he can’t start crying too, he needs to be the strong one.

Minutes pass as they’re swaying slightly from side to side and Kellin is hushing quietly to help Vic calm down. The crying isn’t quite as hard as it was before, but Vic’s still clinging on to Kellin's shirt for dear life as he asks with a small voice,“ W-Why is it always me?”

“I don’t know love,” Kellin whispers and hugs Vic a little bit tighter. Honestly he wishes he knew what made the bullies target Vic so much so he could help to stop it. Most likely they didn’t even have a legitimate reason, bullies rarely have. For some reason or other they had set their sights on Vic and were continuing to torment him day after day. Kellin felt helpless when he couldn’t stop them, but he couldn’t even imagine how Vic must be feeling. He was the one being bullied after all.

“I just want it to stop,” he says pathetically when it seems like he’s run out of tears.

Kellin pulls away from Vic, drying the tear stains from his cheeks with his thumbs and taking a hold of Vic’s hands.

“Maybe we should tell the principal tomorrow,” Kellin suggests quietly.

“Have you ever heard of that actually helping?” Vic says, not really excited about the idea.

“What do we have to lose?” Kellin shoots back.

Vic thinks about it and realises that Kellin is right. He’s already terrified to go to school every morning, he’s always expecting the bullies to find him and torment him a bit more, and the words they’ve been saying have started to stick into his mind. There must be some truth behind them if they’re repeating them day after day, right? Sure, telling to the principal migth not help, but it couldn’t really make the situation worse either. That’s why Vic looks at Kellin who is waiting for his answer and nods, agreeing to the plan.

“So you’ll tell to the principal?” Kellin confirms.

“Yeah… Only if you come with me though,” Vic says. “I don’t want to go alone.”

“Of course,” Kellin replies. “I can confirm that what you’re saying is true. Hell, we can get Mike, Jaime, and Tony there too to tell him how the bullies are treating you. They have no other chance but to believe us.”

“Okay,” Vic agrees, still a bit sceptical of the plan working though. He won’t let his hopes to get too high, just to get them down again.

“But Vic,” Kellin starts cautiously. “I need you to talk to me about all of this. You can’t keep bottling things up.”

“I know,” Vic says, averting his gaze from Kellin's eyes. “I just don’t want to be a bother, that’s all.”

“You’re never a bother Vic.” Kellin says with so much sincerity in his voice that Vic turns to look at him again. His expression is genuine, maybe a bit hurt because Vic thinks that he would be bothering his boyfriend with his problems. “I’d rather you talk to me than watch you keeping it all inside and one day falling apart."

"It's not that bad," Vic says, but he doesn't really believe it either. "I'm strong and I don't need to bother other people with my problems."

"I know, love. You're probably the strongest person I know," Kellin says, and he really means that. He knows that if he were in Vic's shoes he wouldn't be handling all of this so well. "But sometimes being a strong person means letting other people in, and not thinking that you need to deal with it all by yourself."

Vic thinks about what Kellin said for a moment. He has a point, it takes a lot of bravery to admit that you have a problem, something that you can't handle on your own.

Vic's never really been brave in that way. He's thought that keeping it all in and not bothering anyone, to dealing with it on your own meant that you're being brave, that you're strong, independent. But now he sees that it's really just cowardly. He's too scared to admit that he's bothered by all the bullying, scared to let people see that it's affecting him. He doesn't want people to know that he's not strong enough to just push it aside and let the words go in from the other ear and out from the other. When in reality it's just normal to be affected by things like that. And he's lucky. He has friends who care about him and he has Kellin, his boyfriend who he can fully trust. And to be honest, he hasn't really been dealing with his problems on his own, he's pushed them aside, buried in the back of his mind where they haunt him in the late hours of the night, when it's so quiet and there's nothing really distracting him from his thoughts. Maybe it would be better to talk to someone about all of that. Maybe someone could help him with carrying all the thoughts.

"What are you thinking?" Kellin asks quietly when Vic has been lost in his thoughts for a pretty long time. 

"That you're kind of wise," Vic replies with a small smile.

"Oh is that so?" Kellin replies and smiles widely. "Only just now coming to that conclusion?"

"Well, you can usually mask it pretty well," Vic retorts.

They both laugh a little and the tension that their heavy conversation had created eases up a little, both of them smiling at each other now. 

"Thank you," Vic says honestly and leans forward to give Kellin a hug.

"It's okay," Kellin replies and squeezes Vic back tightly. "It's what I'm here for."

And Vic knows that now. He knows that he's not bothering Kellin with his problems, and that it will most likely even make Kellin feel better if he's able to help Vic somehow. He's seen the looks Kellin has given him when he's pushed him away instead of telling him what's weighting on his mind. And he knows how he would feel if Kellin was pushing him away. So yeah, maybe it's time to be brave for once, Vic thinks, and to admit that he needs someone.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Haha, I only just now realised that I wrote this whole thing in a different tense than I usually do. Most of my fics are in past tense but I was almost finished with this one before I noticed that I had been writing in present tense the whole time. :DDDD I don't know where that came from but I kinda like it! :D


End file.
